Senator Feinstein trying to reign in the NSA by giving them more power

On October 31st Senator Feinstein (D-CA) pushed an NSA ‘reform’ bill through the Senate Intelligence Committee. The bill is named the FISA Improvements Act of 2013 (S 1631). This bill does many things, some of them actually pretty good on the transparency side. However as noted by techdirt the main feature of this law is very misleading.:

Reading that, you might think it actually banned the bulk data collection that’s been reported on, but it does not. That “except under specific procedures and restrictions set forth in the bill” just takes the highly questionable reasoning of the FISA Court in approving the bulk data collection and makes that the “exception.” In other words, it does exactly the opposite of what Feinstein claims. Rather than banning bulk data collection, it legalizes it. That third point on the “content” is just a red herring — the same red herring that Feinstein and others have been waving about wildly for months, pretending people are upset about the collection of actual recordings, rather than the collection of metadata. She’s wrong. People are upset about the collection of metadata, which this legalizes.

After reading S 1631 I have to agree with techdirt’s assessment. The NSA scandal happened because of the ‘metadata’ that this law actually codifies. If this law is allowed to pass the NSA would be able to bulk collect data perfectly legally and without restraint. Maybe it’s not just the NSA that needs to read the Fourth Amendment; apparently Senator Feinstein must read it as well.

I would urge everyone to let their Senators know a vote of NO is expected when Senator Reid takes this bill to the floor. Any Senator voting Yes would be choosing to ignore the Fourth Amendment and the civil liberties of all Americans. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has a form that makes contacting Senators easy. It is time to let our Senators know civil liberties are important to us!

PS. It is a good time to once again listen to this classic Remy song about the NSA: